Update, March 24, 2019: Lamb was up for re-election with the newly redrawn state of Pennsylvania electoral map in 2018. He ran in the 17th District, against fellow incumbent Republican Keith Loftus. Lamb defeated him with 56.3 percent of the vote to Loftus’s 43.7 percent.

Lamb is due up again in 2020. Please consider him for your next Core Four.

This OTYCD entry originally posted in January 2018.

Update March 24, 2018: This was a nail-biter. Lamb had a slight but clear lead of 627 votes by the end of the night on March 13, 2018–a margin that was smaller than half a percentage point, and smaller than the number of votes cast for the Libertarian candidate. A recount begun on Friday, March 16 increased Lamb’s lead slightly, nudging it past 800 votes.

Republican opponent Rick Saccone called Lamb to concede the election on March 21. Lamb will lead Pennsylvania’s 18th District until November, when new electoral maps, designed to combat the effects of pro-Republican gerrymandering, go into effect. Lamb will run in the 17th District, and Saccone will run in the 14th District.

Read a Washington Post story about the conclusion of the Pennsylvania special election:

Support Democrat Conor Lamb’s run for the open house seat in Pennsylvania’s 18th district. The special election takes place on March 13, 2018.

Lamb, 33, is a former federal prosecutor who did notable work tackling the opioid crisis in and around Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is also a veteran of the Marine corps, where he rose to the rank of captain. He comes from a political family; his grandfather and his uncle prominently served in high-profile state posts.

Lamb is facing Republican state rep Rick Saccone, who likes to say that he “was Trump before Trump was Trump.” Lamb has never held elected office, and PA-18 has a strong Republican reputation. Given the overperformances by Democrats in special elections and state and local elections since Trump was elected, the Democrats believe that Lamb has a decent shot at the House seat.

Republican Tim Murphy vacated the seat in October 2017 after news broke that the pro-life Congressman had evidently urged a pregnant mistress to abort. He had held the Congressional seat since 2003.

Support Students for Changes, a nonprofit advocacy group started by students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, site of the deadly shooting on February 14, 2018.

Cofounded by three survivors of the attack that killed 17 of their peers and teachers, Students for Changes focuses on three things: gun safety, mental health, and school safety. The ultimate goal is to create a world where deadly school shootings are memories and not ever-present threats.

The pinned tweet on its Twitter page as of early March 2018 stated:

This Nonprofit Organization is started and led by Marjory Stoneman Douglas students. We’ve made this for the express purpose of connecting and consolidating the efforts of students nationwide to change our current policies and societal notions.

During the same period, its Twitter feed thanked Delta Airlines for rescinding the group discount it had offered to National Rifle Association (NRA) members, thanked Kroger, Walmart, and L.L. Bean for raising their minimum customer age for gun sales to 21, and promised to keep fighting after the Florida state senate passed, then quickly revoked, a two-year ban on the AR-15 semi-automatic rifle.

The founders intend this to be a student-led movement, and they encourage the creation of chapters in schools across America. As of March 4, 2018, SSC is filing to become a 501 (c) (3) nonprofit.

Bill Weld is a former governor of Massachusetts, and he ran on the Libertarian ticket in 2016 as the vice presidential candidate.

He has announced an exploratory committee for 2020, but he only says he’ll run if he gets enough donations to make a campaign worthwhile.

The GOP, craven cowards that they are, does not want Trump to face any challengers in the primary. Other Republicans have publicly mulled stepping up to challenge him, but none have done so as of March 2019.

Weld has stepped up, and he will not be scared off.

This should go without saying, but to be clear–asking you to consider giving money to Weld does not mean we at OTYCD endorse his platform or his worldview. Some of his positions suck like a Dyson showroom.

As Republicans go, he’s definitely one of the ones who suck less. He’s pro-choice, pro-LGBT rights, and in favor of legalizing marijuana. He also ran Massachusetts well for six years in the 1990s.

But, yeah, Weld likes stuff you don’t like, for sure, no question. He supports charter schools, and he wants to cut, cut, cut taxes like vampires want to drink blood.

If giving money to a Republican is a 100 percent always-and-forever no-go for you, understood, we get it. Go here or here instead today to get things you can do.

But if you can’t, or can’t bring yourself, to give money to Weld, consider educating yourself about him and supporting him by spreading the word about his efforts, in person and on social media.

Trump can’t win with his base alone, and his base is shrinking by the day. It’s worth it to do what we can to encourage the rise of alternative candidates who appeal to voters who typically vote Republican, but who don’t want to re-elect Trump. Weld fits the bill.

Weld says he’ll make his decision in late April or early May. If this is something you can do, please do it.

Captain Awkward is the Half-Assed Activist on her Patreon page, and is, unsurprisingly, awesome. You should read it and become a monthly donor.

So! A while back we at One Thing You Can Do devoted a blog post to Captain Awkward because she has a lot of good advice that applies to dealing with trolls and twerps without losing your shit–skills that apply to dealing with politically-motivated trolls and twerps.

Since then she’s added a Patreon and added a feature to her Patreon page: The Half-Assed Activist. It launched in January 2019 and it specifically tackles issues around political engagement, mental health, and mental health.

It’s exclusive to her Patreon, so you need to go there to see it.

You should be a Captain Awkward Patreon anyway (Disclaimer: Sarah Jane gives her $1 per month). But! The material she’s written for The Half-Assed Activist makes it even more of a bargain.*

The posts are infrequent–as of May 2019, there have been two–but they’re worth your time. Her April post, We Have Always Lived In Presidential Primary Season: A Half-Assed Activist Post About Getting Through This Shitshow Without Perpetuating Or Tolerating Bad Behavior And Keeping Some Tiny Spark Of Hope Alive, expertly brings the fire and merits a bookmark, so you can return to it and stoke yourself to go out there and do what needs doing.

Here’s the Patreon post in which CA introduces The Half-Assed Activist:

Here’s the link to We Have Always Lived In Presidential Primary Season: A Half-Assed Activist Post About Getting Through This Shitshow Without Perpetuating Or Tolerating Bad Behavior And Keeping Some Tiny Spark Of Hope Alive:

Subscribe to One Thing You Can Do by clicking the button on the upper right of the page. And tell your friends about the blog!

*Captain Awkward generously gives hat-tips to One Thing You Can Do on her Patreon page. We’re delighted with hearing nice words spoken about us by someone we’ve all looked up to forever, but you should know–we didn’t solicit those comments. No logrolling here, we promise. And if her posts for The Half-Assed Activist sucked, we wouldn’t write about them. But they don’t, so we are.

Heller screwed up big-time when he succumbed to pressure to vote in favor of Trumpcare 2.0. He is feeling the heat, as he should. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to stop him from signing on to cosponsor Bill Cassidy and Lindsey Graham’s Trumpcare 3.0 bill.

Even before his Trumpcare 2.0 vote, polls had Heller losing to a generic Democrat, 39 percent to 46 percent. Nevada also went for Clinton during the 2016 election, enhancing the view that Heller is vulnerable. In the wake of Trumpcare 2.0, he is more vulnerable still.

Rosen has stepped up on the Democratic side to challenge him. Please check out her site and think about what you can do to help her. Note also that Rosen is supported by our friends at 314 Action, the organization that boosts candidates who have STEM backgrounds. She worked as a computer programmer and a software developer.

Note: Sarah Jane, lead editor on OTYCD, has since chosen Rosen for her Core Four.

Cisneros faces re-election in 2020. Please consider him for your next Core Four.

Original text of the post follows.

Support Democrat Gil Cisneros, who’s running for the House of Representatives seat in California’s 39th District that Republican Ed Royce is leaving.

To flip the House of Representatives to Democratic control, the party needs to win at least 24 seats in the fall elections that are currently Republican.

California offers many opportunities for Democratic pickups–at least eight. The 39th District is one of them. Ed Royce, a particularly noxious Republican who held the Orange County seat for the last 26 years has announced he would retire.

Cisneros came second in a very crowded June 5 primary. California uses a top-two system where the two candidates who get the most votes advance to the general, no matter what party they’re from. He beat 15 other candidates to earn the right to compete.

The only person who got more votes than him, the Royce-endorsed Young Kim, drew almost 22 percent of the vote to Cisneros’s 19.3 percent.

The California 39th seat is gettable. The Cook Political Report rates it as a Toss-up.

Read a July 2017 Los Angeles Times piece about Cisneros’s entry into the race, in which he mentions that he left the Republican Party in 2008 because he didn’t like the direction in which the party was going:

As a member of the House, Rouda will be up for re-election in 2020. Please consider including him in your 2020 Core Four.

Original text of the 2018 post on Rouda’s campaign follows.

Support Democrat Harley Rouda’s campaign to win the House of Representatives seat in California’s 48th Congressional District and unseat Republican Dana Rohrabacher.

It was inevitable that the 2018 race in California’s 48th would command attention. Republican incumbent Dana Rohrabacher has held the seat since 1988 (that’s not a typo, you read that right, he’s been there almost 30 years) and he is widely seen as being in the pocket of Vladimir Putin and Russia.

This goes beyond an affinity for blinis and borscht.

In 2012, the FBI warned Rohrabacher that the Kremlin regards him as being so Russia-friendly that they gave him a code name:

In October 2017, news broke that House Republican leaders restricted his ability to use Congressional funds on travel because of his closeness to Russia:

A June 2016 recording, which was subsequently heard and confirmed by Washington Post reporters, captured House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy stating, “There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump.” House Speaker Paul Ryan reportedly stopped the conversation and swore everyone listening to secrecy.

The Cook Political Report shows the trouble the Republican incumbent is in. It rates his seat as a Toss-up.

Democrats need to gain at least 24 seats in the House of Representatives to take control of the chamber. Those who know say that eight of those 24 could flip in California. The 48th is one of those eight.

After a ferociously fought June 5, 2018 top-two primary that included eight Democrats among 15 challengers for Rohrabacher’s seat, Harley Rouda took second place by 126 votes. (Thanks again for your efforts, Hans Keirstead.)

This seat is eminently gettable, and Rouda is raring to get it. Please look at the links below and see if you can support him. Rouda promises to be tougher on Russia than Rohrabacher is, but to be fair, it’s mathematically impossible not to be tougher on Russia than Rohrabacher is.